


Inspiration (Sci-Fi Dreams Remix)

by Neverever



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Future, Infinity War Reference, Inspiration, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 08:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17804774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/pseuds/Neverever
Summary: Steve turns to books and movies to understand the nightmares he's had since he was a kid selling newspapers.





	Inspiration (Sci-Fi Dreams Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/gifts).
  * Inspired by [In My Dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17431907) by [alexcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/pseuds/alexcat). 



> Written as part of the 2019 Cap-IM Remix Exchange event.
> 
> This is a remix of Alexcat's In My Dreams story. For the remix, I changed up the timeline of the fic, setting the start of the story much earlier. I hope you like it, Alexcat!
> 
> Thanks to the beta.

Steve knew exactly when the nightmares had started. 

Flying skeletons in armor pouring down from the sky with armored whales and shooting people in the city. And he had to stop them all by himself with just a metal shield.

His exhausted mother sat up with him when he woke up screaming and would not go back to sleep. Sarah rocked him back and forth, reading stories from a book of Irish fairy tales, the stories she had grown up listening to back in the old country.

“Did you have a bad day, sweetie?” she said, kissing his blond head. “Did something scare you?”

Steve didn’t think he had. The day hadn’t been any different from any other day. He gotten up at dawn to sell papers before school. The teacher talked to him about doodling in class instead of listening. He ran errands for the local druggist, putting the few coins he’d earned into a cup on the kitchen counter. 

But not the strange little coin he’d been given by a woman in yellow nun’s clothes. She had dropped her necklace in front of Steve on his newspaper corner. Steve had picked it up, his thumb swiping over the yellow jewel set in the middle, and handed it back to her. She had smiled kindly at him and tipped him. 

The nightmares never stopped.

In school, he read about George Washington and the cherry tree, Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, and Johnny Appleseed. In the library, he read Dr. Doolittle and Wizard of Oz, but the world changed when he read Twain, Burroughs and Jules Verne. The librarians smiled at him as they loaded all the books he could carry in his stick-thin arms, a tow-headed boy in worn shorts and scraped knees.

At night he dreamed about fighting robots in an ancient church and falling from giant airships in the clouds.

Bucky was there when Steve bought his first Doc Savage magazine, the strange coin jingling in a pocket as his lucky charm. Bucky snapped his gum. “You could do that, draw those nightmares you keep having.”

Steve had thought about it -- he’d become pretty decent at drawing after years of copying photos from the newspapers and sketching whenever he had a pencil and paper. Even after all the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials, Steve still hadn’t gotten the hang of space ships and ray guns. He mumbled about not having the talent or the time.

He dreamed about fighting in a cold, concrete building and a glass-walled elevator car. The lights, the sounds, the colors, the sharp and tangible feel of it all was infinitely more real that the flickering images of Buck Rogers on the screen in the movie theater. He never told Bucky that he’d had dreams where he punched a grim-looking older Bucky.

Steve still had the nightmares long after he had other reasons to have nightmares. He sat patiently in doctors’ and hospital waiting rooms with his stack of _Astounding_ magazines, hoping for the best, knowing that the worst would happen. He drew the figures from his dreams while his sick mother listened to her stories on the radio and made sarcastic comments about the latest soap opera romance.

For nearly all his life, he’d had the same nightmares of fighting, blood, pain, and fear. But one night when he slept on the floor of Bucky’s parents' apartment, he dreamed of a man with brown hair and a soft smile, running his fingers through Steve’s hair. Steve couldn’t catch a single thing the man whispered to him. He shuddered awake and found it was a good thing he was alone in the living room.

The future was coming. Steve read about Howard Stark and his levitating car and Phineas Horton’s synthetic man in the papers. He watched the news reels with a rising anger about Hitler and the inevitable war. His nightmares remained fantastic and weird and unsettling, matching nothing he’d read or seen in his twenty years on earth. 

Bucky had shipped out, battlefield unknown. It was his last night in his apartment before he reported to Camp Lehigh. Steve tucked a couple of Superman comics into his foot locker along with an old copy of Heroes of the Western Front and shut the top with a click.

He dreamed that night of fighting with that red, white and blue shield beside a red and gold robot and a whole team of people in carnival costumes attacking a large purple giant. They won. 

Steve startled awake, the images of him hugging and kissing a dark-haired man in a red suit of armor slipping out of his mind as he hit his alarm clock. Squaring his shoulders and with a last look round his apartment, he headed off to face whatever Erskine had planned for him.

~~~~~

“Steve,” Tony said, nudging him gently. “You were flailing and shouting.”

“Wut?” Steve propped himself up. 

“Shouting. About the Red Skull and the tesseract.”

Steve looked up at the ceiling. He drew the back of his hand across his face, trying to reconcile being in bed with Tony next to him as opposed to being in the Valkyrie shoving his shield into Schmidt. The present was a much better place to be.

“What you were dreaming about?”

“The Valkyrie. Red Skull. The tesseract burning a hole through the hull.”

Tony propped himself up on one elbow and put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “You, um, seem to have a lot of nightmares. Not that I should be saying anything about that -- one time I had this dream and I summoned the armor --”

“I’ve always had nightmares -- since I was seven,” Steve admitted. He leaned into Tony’s welcome warmth.

"About what?”

"I don’t remember much -- robots, sky ships, flying skeletons …”

“Like the Battle of New York?”

“Or the aircraft carriers over the Triskelion. Or Ultron --”

"You had these dreams before the serum?”

“Since I was seven. I’ve been dreaming about the future all my life.”

“Or just a really weird case of deja vu. But wait -- if you’ve been having dreams of the future -- can you remember anything else from the future?”

“I don’t --”

“Are they like my visions that I had after the Battle of New York?”

After they had reconciled and fallen in love, Tony had told him about the visions of the earth laid waste by invaders and his feelings of helplessness. Steve wished they had talked before Siberia. But that was water under the bridge now.

Steve’s phone rang with an Earth, Wind, and Fire ringtone, a surprise gift from Sam. Steve sprung up from the bed, reaching for his phone in the light from the streets outside the hotel. “I have to go -- I’m late.”

Tony was already pulling on his pants. “I had planned to talk you into staying a couple more days.”

Drawing Tony close, Steve kissed the top of his head. “I would -- I would if you asked. But we’re risking too much by even meeting like this.”

“I’ve always dreamed of having an forbidden assignation in a low-end hotel in Edinburgh.”

“Stay safe, Tony.”

In twenty minutes, they were dressed, packed and ready to go. Reluctant to part but knowing the consequences of being caught together, Steve stood at the doorway, his fingers entwined with Tony’s.

Tony had been working through all his ideas about Steve’s dreams. “You’ve been dreaming of the future -- have you had any dreams about how all of this ends?”

“I -- I don’t think so. I don’t remember them very well.” Steve left it unsaid that if he was indeed dreaming of the future, Siberia would never have happened. Or the need for him and Tony to sneak around out of sight of Ross’ surveillance.

“See you as soon as I can.”

~~~~~

Thanos was defeated. Once and for all.

Steve waded through the debris and wreckage of the fight to the odd scene of Tony in the armor holding coffee talking to a man in a cape and complicated clothes, also holding coffee.

“Hey, Steve, meet Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystical Arts and all that jazz and his friend Wong -- the one I was telling you about.”

His curiosity about where they got the coffee was solved when a cup appeared in his hand after a wave of Doctor Strange’s hands. “Uh, thank you?”

“You’re welcome, Captain.”

Steve nearly choked on his coffee when he saw the ancient amulet Strange wore. He’d seen it long ago on an early morning in New York when he was seven and selling newspapers. Catching Strange’s eye, it was clear that Strange knew that Steve knew.

Strange and Wong exchanged a knowing look. “I see that my predecessor gave you a ‘gift,’ Captain. I can resolve it.” A few yellow sparks flew from his fingers and Steve had a sudden feeling of being unburdened.

“Uh, thank you?”

“The gift was meant to give hope when all else had failed,” Wong explained.

Steve looked at Tony, who had a pained expression because of the magic. He smiled at him, remembering that first dream he’d had of Tony all those years ago. “It worked.”


End file.
